Shutter
by cupid-painted-blind
Summary: [This is the way the world ends.] A Peter Pettigrew character sketch, part of the Rainbow Project over on the Reviews Lounge.


**shutter**  
(_this is the way the world ends_)

There aren't any rainbows anymore.

He doesn't know why he notices this, nor why it affects him the way it does - only, he can hear Remus-Moony-The-Werewolf's voice in the back of his mind -

_My mother always told me that rainbows were gifts from above, little reminders that everything would work out, you know? That, even though it rains, the sun will come out eventually._

But what are they? he'd asked, and Remus just smiled and said something about lights and colors and refraction and he lost interest. The gift-from-above explanation was better, prettier. More hopeful than scientific facts. That was Moony's problem, he always analyzed everything until it lost all of its mystery and meaning. Peter never liked Remus very much.

There aren't any rainbows anymore, not since the dementors got away from Azkaban and started spreading their misty plague. There's no light left to fracture into them and Remus's old mum was wrong, because the sun isn't coming out again and nothing is going to work out right, because even if they win -

(_he doesn't know who he wants to win_)

- they'll lose, because the Wizarding World will never convert and happily follow them. Even if the Death Eaters triumph, the world as a whole loses and what good is it to be a God of a people who hate you, outcast by most of the world and favored by the tyrant? And if the Death Eaters lose, the rest of the world has still lost because so many people have died just to knock out someone who should have been smothered as an infant and never let into Hogwarts or even out of the womb and if he keeps thinking like this, he'll be killed.

Or tortured, or worse.

He wants to see a rainbow, wants to think about hope, maybe, about good times and Lily's smile (Lily-whom-he-hates because of her heritage and her pretty hair and her sympathy, which was never reserved for him, only it sort of was, sometimes, and he hates her for that too, because he can't hate someone so _good_, and he has to hate her on principle and left-over bitterness that he never quite managed to get rid of). And maybe if he shuts his eyes tight enough, he can hear Sirius-who-went-insane laughing like a bark and James-whom-he-killed snickering over a prank and Remus-left-all-alone berating them like he used to, and -

There aren't any rainbows anymore.

(_he thinks that it all went wrong somewhere down the line_)

Peter-Wormtail-The-Traitor's mother never told him comforting stories about rainbows. She hugged him close and told him how wonderful he was and how magic would come and he would be great someday, and not to worry about his mediocrity. Peter's mother took such good care of him then, but it all backfired because he found out that she was wrong and he would never be great or good or even okay and he hates her for lying to him like that, even if it made him feel great when she said it.

He can feel himself going insane, bit by bit, piece by piece. He can't believe that he's to blame for any of this. He can't believe that he's evil. He's just a kid, just a child, just a scared boy who was lied to and cast aside and tossed away and who never had comfortable stories about hope and never had a pretty girlfriend to love him and hold him and kiss him and they say that Moony is married now and that's not right because who wants to marry a _werewolf_, anyway?

He's going just a little bit crazy with all of this, just a little bit tired of being the trod-on, forgotten, pathetic _Pettigrew_ who betrayed his friends and can't even cast a really good silencing spell and he could be worth so much if he could just gather up the guts to go back. Maybe Moony wouldn't forgive him, and maybe Harry would still hate him, but he has _information_, he has secrets, he can point the Order straight to Death Eater headquarters, tell them exactly how to take over all these people, exactly how to stop them.

His silver hand twitches.

But he could never do that. He doesn't have the spine. James-Prongs-The-Leader would be so disgusted with him.

_(he still cares what they would think, and he hates himself for that, too_)

There aren't any rainbows anymore. It's all dreary and wet and hopeless and foggy and he's tired of seeing rain and he thinks that the first chance he gets, he needs to go off to the Bahamas or Fiji or Tahiti, somewhere warm and tropical, where he can disappear into the crowds and be happy and comfortable and marry a bikini-clad islander who won't ever ask him to do magic tricks or keep her secrets or commit murder. He thinks that he's tired of all of this and tired of the little shreds of regret and memories and tired of the way he's kicked around.

They say that Sirius-Padfoot-The-Murderer hid in the tropics. He could do that too, and Padfoot's dead now, so he won't be able to follow him and attack him and hate him and Peter can't help it but a tiny, itty-bitty little part of him misses Padfoot because Padfoot was so lively and energetic that it was impossible to be morose around him. It's sad that Padfoot's dead.

But he can't bring himself to care all that much because he's so tired of all of this and tired of hating everyone and tired of everyone making him hate them and tired of murder and cruelty and The Dark Lord and he just wants to see Lily smile at him and he thinks that maybe Lily would have been able to forgive him because Lily was so good and empathetic and caring and maybe Lily wouldn't have hated him.

But he'll never know, will he? He killed Lily.

There aren't any rainbows anymore.  
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(A/N: This was written for the Rainbow Challenge over on the Reviews Lounge and can also be found in Rainbow Magic under the penname The Reviews Lounge, along with my other piece for this, featuring Narcissa Black-Malfoy. The line at the top is from one of my favorite poems ever, The Hollow Men, by T.S. Eliot. Review!)


End file.
